van yogurt

while i'm busy knitting, pop over to sarah's blog at "trail cooking" and see what she has been up to. all good! since i rarely use my cooler in the van, i love getting ideas about how to have some occasional treats that normally take refrigeration or ice. i don't eat a lot of yogurt, but this is how i shall have some yogurt when i've a hankering out in the desert,  far from civ :-)  thanks sarah!

http://blog.trailcooking.com/2010/11/30/food-find-instant-trail-yogurt-via-the-baby-food-aisle/

as many of you know, and as we have mentioned on vandwellers, sarah is the guru of freezer bag cooking. you can find her on facebook too!

i've been busy

i have been in a sort of fiber seclusion. Turkey Day market is tuesday, and i have a few ufo's (unfinished objects) i need to..... finish.....and a dozen i want to start! two more events in december, but things will relax after tuesday. you'll hear from me then! promise!

fear and traveling

any of you that know me know that i am basically a coward with courage. not too many things i'm afraid to do or try, but more often than not, i need to get past some bit of fear or hesitation. i am not what i would consider reckless, though. i often need a little (okay, a lot) of encouragement when doing new stuff.

the subject of safety has surfaced in a few places again lately. there are so many positions on safety and protection, all across the board. so many different life experiences that can shape our perspectives. as a victim of a violent crime and a person with an anxiety disorder, my evaluation of risk is very personal. it most likely won't be yours, and that is as it should be. we each need to take the time to study the broad base of information available in order to make choices that we are comfortable with.

the united states scares me, sometime scares the bejeebers right outta me. awhile back, there was a couple in an RV murdered and found in the burnt out RV, most likely by those escaped prisoners in the southwest. what i found very striking is that there was so little mention of it, in the press, or in my vandweller circles. did anyone else find that disturbing? the murders, i mean?

i could not help but wonder how that whole scenario went down. was this couple kidnapped in a truckstop parking lot? approached with a smile while stretching their muscles at a rest stop? bushwhacked while boondocking in the desert? i've thought of that many times. i thought about the fact that their weapons were possibly used on them....they certainly didn't protect them. i understand that the prisoners were in possession of the victims guns, at any rate. how would i have fared if i had been the one approached by those prisoners? where would my weapons have been? would wasp spray, a machete, a 9mm have helped? would my intuitive alarm have gone off? would it have gone off in time? or would i have answered some smiling stranger inquiring about my dog with the cute stripe on his nose, oblivious to danger.....

i am no more afraid than i was before. i still intend to get back on the road as soon as i am able. i will still stay at truckstops and reststops, and way up in the hills in the desert all alone. i will continue to hone my awareness and my intuition, and try not to lose the joy of spontaneous meeting as i travel. i will tweak my weapons and the skills of using them, as i practice ways to avoid that need. i will still operate on a faith that everything in the universe is exactly as it should be.....

a big debate with strong opinions is regarding the dangers of traveling to mexico. i hear and read alot about killings there related to the drug war. if you are messing with the wrong cartel, you are liable to lose your head. that almost goes without saying. i just read a link about 20 people being killed at a home in mexico. that sounded more intentional than random, not something i am likely to encounter while traveling there. that happens everywhere in the U.S., even near my hometown.

so how do you sort it out? where do you find your safe zone? in your weapons? in your mindset? by staying home? (i can promise you that isn't always safe.)

some links here regarding state department warnings.

this guys blog is very interesting reading.


i would love to hear your thoughts on this. especially why we heard so little about this RV couple that was killed, right here on our own soil.

kate

thermos cooking a la heidi

heidi just did a post over at vansteaders on thermos cooking. i haven't done it in some time, and with the cold weather approaching, will welcome hot food with little effort or fuel consumption. one of my biggest complaints was poor results in cooking brown rice. heidi's blog shows success with that, here

you can read my old blog post on making a reflectix cover for my thermos here.

thermos dimensions: 4" diameter and 7"tall
                    circumference of thermos alone 12.5"
                    circumference with cozy 17.25"
                    20 oz. (0.59 liters)

some photos of my thermos:

knitting worms

"what is that?" you say. "what are you talking about? worms that knit?"

nope! knitting a worm! heidi has me all in a dither. with all the new found time on my hands after restructuring my life a bit, i have been able to delve into, and actually bring together, several passions. today it is homesteading (vansteading to many of us!) and knitting......

last night i emailed heidi to remind her that Brian the Younger had been doing vermiculture (composting with worms)in his rv when i met him in pahrump. i have some pics somewhere of the cute little guys and the resulting rich, black compost they produced, but thought heidi might be able to get brian to contribute his experiences to the vansteader information pool since i, as i told her,  don't know much about worm poo. i have long been interested in trying it (making it, not eating it) but becoming semi-mobile put a stop to that.....

or has it? i was interested when i saw brian's set-up, but he has a much larger rv with room for that sort of thing. i immediately dismissed it as impracticle in the rondyvan, which is a very silly thing to do. i should know by now that ideas should never be dismissed, only shelved temporarily until heidi gets me all inspired again, and ya throw a whole network of vandwellers and such into the mix :-)

so, the knitting, what about the knitting?

i remembered a discussion on vermiculture in small spaces that we had on a group called ishcon, where friends of ishmael gathered. it took some digging, but i finally found the thread, and lo and behold! i not only found the website of the marvelous woman who created "worm-ware", the sustainable answer to composting on the go, but a pattern for knitted worms! all on the very same website! now ya wonder why i think my life is pretty amazing?

i'm gonna quit rattling on here, and give you some links to check it out yourself. enjoy!

travels with worms

knit one red worm

cityworm

i can't wait to see where heidi goes with this! kylie, you too!

laundry

 heidi just did a post over at vansteaders  on doing laundry. i recently got a new laundry plunger and she has inspired me to finally get to posting about it. i first heard about the mobile breathing washer  from steve spence at green trust.org

for years, in between trips to the laundromat, i have done my laundry in a 5 gallon bucket with the rapid washer from lehman's hardware. the big tin-plated steel washer was one piece, too bulky for vandwelling, and had a tendency to rust, so i was pleased to see the newer, portable version.

in my van, i use the 3 gal. paint buckets available at lowe's. as you can see, i cut a hole in a lid for the plunger. i need to do smaller loads, obviously, than with the 5 gal. bucket at the farm. i have a small washboard i use in my collapsible sink for small stuff.

the breathing mobile washer is very sturdy, and disassembles easily. i got mine on ebay for $15 with free shipping. it works just as well as the rapid washer did, and is easier to store. i'm going to do some experiments with heidi's ammonia method, and i'll report back my results in a later post.